


Hot Cocoa

by stabbyunicorn



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hot Cocoa, New Year's Eve, New Year's Fluff, New Years, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 03:21:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stabbyunicorn/pseuds/stabbyunicorn
Summary: Taylor wants to play noir. Sophia and Emma want to play superheroes. Annette misses Danny.





	1. 2007

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to my mom. Happy New Year's!
> 
> Thanks to EtchJetty, Juff, and 6thfloormadness for beta help

Taylor Hebert was almost twelve years old. Double-digits, she’d have you know; she told her Aunt Tessie as much every time she visited.

“Pour me another,” said Taylor, clinking her shot glass down loudly against the kitchen counter. She was growing so fast: her feet almost reached the lower rung of the barstool. She wore a suit several sizes too big, and her fedora was too large for her head—both were her aunt’s—but her tie was impeccably tied.

Her mother laughed silently before obliging, lifting the bottle of apple juice and making a show of pouring out another shot. Taylor downed it quick enough she couldn’t have managed to taste any.

“I downed another shot,” she said, doing her best to make her voice gravelly but instead only sounding like a constipated frog. “But it did nothing to soothe the memories of the morning. How did I land myself here in this run-down joint?”

It was a harsh critique of their kitchen. True, some paint was chipped, and the tiled countertop would have been nicer as granite, but it was functional and it was theirs.

Taylor had been watching too many of her father’s old noir films. She was too young for them, double-digits though she now was, but Annette couldn’t bring herself to keep them from her daughter. Danny had always watched them every Sunday evening with Annette’s sister, back when Danny was alive and before Tessie had moved to Maine, and Taylor had always tried to peek in through the spindles of the stairs. The ritual had become Annette’s and Taylor’s: every Sunday, mother and daughter would curl up on Danny’s old recliner with mugs of hot cocoa in hand, watch Danny’s old movies, and remember.

“Another,” said Taylor, hunching over the counter and gesturing in an attempt to imitate drunkenness.

“I’m cutting you off,” said Annette. “You’ll want some for your game. What are you doing, again?”

Taylor chewed on the end of a stick of caramel, then pulled it away from her mouth as if it were a cigarette. She tried to adopt a solemn frown, but failed.

“It was as any fool could have guessed,” she said, again trying to make her voice gruff. “More the fool I was for not guessing. My own mother didn’t understand what I was doing. What I was trying to accomplish.”

“I think ‘more the fool _was_ I’ would have flowed more smoothly,” said Annette, prompting an eye roll from her daughter: Taylor never liked when others broke character.

The doorbell rang.

“And then _they_ walked in,” said Taylor. “Off the wretched streets of Brockton Bay.”

Annette crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t think _anyone_ has walked in yet, Taylor,” she said.

“Ugh, fine,” said Taylor. Annette did her utmost not to point out her daughter’s own break of character, nor that the city of Brockton was a half hour’s drive south and did not, as far as she knew, have a bay. But she couldn’t hold back a small smile as she turned back to stir the black-eyed peas in the old slow cooker. The peas had also been one of Danny’s traditions; they were lucky, he’d always said.

Taylor hopped off the barstool, nearly toppling it behind her, and bounced her way over to the front door. She peered through the curtained windows by its sides—she couldn’t quite reach the peephole—before speaking loudly.

“Password?”

Knock-knock. Knock-knock. Knock-knock-knock.

Taylor opened the door.

“And then _they_ walked in,” said Taylor, again. “Friends, some would call them. But I knew their secret.”

“Taylor!” exclaimed Sophia. “Happy New Year!”

“It’s Detective,” said Taylor. “Detective Hebert. And what brings you to a place like mine on a day like this, Miss Hess? Miss Barnes?”

“Detective?” asked Emma. “I thought we were doing superheroes?”

“A superhero detective?” asked Sophia. “That’s a bit much.”

The Zoes—Zoe Hess and Zoe Barnes—stepped around their children and into the foyer.

“Annette! You around?” Annette heard her friend’s voice attempt to sound over the children’s babbling. “Careful! Take it into the kitchen, Sophia—”

“We’re doing noir,” said Taylor. “I’m a detective. Sophia can be the femme fatale. I’ve been planning it out—”

“Superheroes!” insisted Emma.

Annette gave the peas another stir, then turned to mashing the potatoes. Danny always used to help her, before. He’d always made a show of flexing his muscles. ‘Let a manly man handle this,’ he’d say, lowering his voice for added effect, as if his own muscles were stronger than his wife’s, as if _he_ were the one who regularly exercised.

“But I didn’t plan for superheroes,” said Taylor. Annette was certain she could hear her daughter pouting from the other room. “I planned for noir.”

The girls poured into the small kitchen, Sophia with a casserole in her arms, Emma with an insulated carrier, and Taylor with two rustling plastic bags that probably held desserts.

“Annette!” exclaimed Zoe—Zoe Barnes, this time. “Oh! Let me help!”

Annette gladly gave up the masher and went to help Emma and Sophia place their dishes on the counter.

“You don’t need to plan to superhero,” said Emma, forgetting entirely to greet Annette. “You’re a hero.”

“Fine. But you’re bullies,” said Taylor. “Mean, awful bullies.”

“Say hello to Aunt Annette, girls,” said Zoe Hess. The corn soufflé’s glass container chimed as she set it down on the tiled countertop. It was the girls’ favorite dish, though Annette didn’t understand why; it was unpleasantly sweet, and the texture was too mushy.

“Hi Aunt Annette!” said Emma, before turning back to Taylor. “Okay, we can be bullies, but you have a stupid power. Like… freezing water. Or bug control.”

“The bugs one,” said Sophia. “You can control bugs. Happy New Year, Aunt Annette!”

“Ugh, fine-uh,” said Taylor, lifting the dessert-filled bags onto the counter. “But I only have powers ‘cause _you_ did something terrible to me.”

She rushed out of the kitchen and into the living room. Taylor had taken over the room earlier in the day, commandeering Danny’s old dice and pretending she and her friends were already playing whatever game she had concocted.

“Ooh, what did we do?” asked Sophia, rushing to follow her friend.

“How’s Alan?” asked Annette.

“Oh, good, good,” said Zoe Barnes. “Carol’s still being Carol, but he’s managing, anyway. And uh—” She paused to mash a potato. “—you? Freshmen any better yet?”

“They never shape up ‘til the end of year,” said Annette. She wished she could go back to teaching graduate students, but the university had been reorganizing things. She just hoped they didn’t reorganize her out of a job. “Can you hand me the cream?”

Emma’s voice carried from the living room. “We shoved her in a locker!” she exclaimed. “With trash!”

“No, I know! Worse!” said Sophia, as Annette added a teaspoon of vanilla and started to add the tablespoons of sugar. She glanced through the archway to the living room and saw Sophia lean over and whisper something in Taylor’s ear. Taylor’s mouth dropped open, scandalized, and Annette started the mixer, deciding there were some things she didn’t need to know.

The mixer roared as it began whipping the cream. It only took a few minutes to make from scratch, and was always worth it. Annette glanced at the timer for the rice: still a few minutes left.

Through the doorway she saw Taylor set her aunt’s fedora on the side table before digging around in its cabinet, pulling out various odds and ends. Sophia snatched up a dragon figurine.

“How’s Tessie?” asked Zoe Hess, yelling over the mixer. “She not visiting?”

“Couldn’t get away,” said Annette. “Said she tried, though.”

“She still helping?” asked Zoe.

“Where she can,” said Annette. “But with the market… She’s worried she may not be able to. She’s been trying to get us to move up with her, but… well, Taylor.”

Zoe nodded, frowning in sympathy. The girls would be crushed if Taylor and Annette moved up north.

“But for now, it’s New Year’s,” said Annette, trying to smile. She glanced down at the bowl. The whipped cream was starting to form peaks.

“I’m gonna play three people!” Annette heard Sophia exclaim, even over the din, and she took it as her cue to bring the mixer to a halt. She supposed it was inevitable that Sophia would end up playing as many people as she could in this game of Taylor’s: Sophia wanted to be an actress when she grew up.

“We were going to play as _us,_ ” said Taylor. Again, Annette could easily hear the pout in her voice.

“Yeah, we can play us, too,” said Sophia. “This way, I can play my arch-nemesis Grue. He’s got darkness powers!”

“And I’m his partner-in-crime!” exclaimed Emma, grinning smugly.

“Well, I’m gonna catch you both!” said Taylor. “‘Cause I’m a hero.”

“You’ll try!”

Dinner was just about ready. But… let them play a little longer.

“I wanna rob a bank!”

* * *

“Who wants hot cocoa?” asked Annette, carefully carrying a tray loaded with mugs into the living room. “It’s almost New Year’s!”

Annette slumped into the old recliner, her own mug in her hands. She almost spilled it as Taylor squeezed herself in beside her.

“Taylor!” exclaimed Annette, laughing and reaching up to hold her cocoa steady. She looked over to Sophia and Emma, who were each adding marshmallows to their mugs.

“Happy New Year’s!” exclaimed Taylor, and Annette turned back to her, smiling.

“Happy New Year’s, Taylor.”


	2. 2011

First Leviathan, now Behemoth. Annette tried not to read too much into the ‘Endbringers,’ as her daughter had called them, but—

“You can’t just say ‘I win,’ Aunt Tessie,” said Taylor, her offense-laden voice carrying into the Barnes’s kitchen. Annette had tried to explain the game to her sister, but Tessie never had that long of an attention span. “It’s— it’s just not— You don’t know how to play.”

“It’s a superhero game, right?” said Taylor’s aunt. “That’s my power. I win.”

“Well that’s just cheating,” Taylor objected.

“So?” asked Tessie. Annette could almost hear her shrug. “Life’s not fair.”

It was Tessie’s pet cliché. She didn’t understand that Taylor understood life’s unfairness perfectly well. It was _why_ Taylor played the game with her friends, Annette thought: to create a world that they could change; over which they had some control.

And while Annette tried not to read too much into Taylor’s machinations, sometimes it was hard not to. Taylor had first introduced Leviathan two years back, on the second anniversary of the girl’s game, just after their first semester going to different high schools. The tone of their game had taken a turn, but then, perhaps it had been shifting for awhile, changing from a game of cops and robbers into one involving life and death, always one-upping itself, morphing from mad bombers to evil kidnappers to gang warfare. But after Leviathan, things had gone more terrible, more merciless, more gruesome.

At least the girls had still been living in the same state, then. But the past few weeks… Annette wondered if the move had prompted Taylor’s reintroduction of the Endbringers.

“She can’t use _that_ power,” she heard Taylor yell. “Not against Behemoth. What’s the point of the game if you just cheat?”

“There’s a conspiracy, right?” asked Tessie. “The one giving out magic powers? Cauldron, or something?”

“Beaker,” said Taylor. “No magic, Aunt Tessie. No magic.”

“Cauldron’s better,” said Tessie. “I’m with them. They have to have a powerful hero on their side.”

“You aren’t a hero,” said Taylor. “You’re a menace, ruining everything _again._ Look, I just want to play with my friends, alright?”

“Okay, fine,” said Tessie. “I’ll just take these back with me, then.”

Annette heard the sound of several figurines bumping against each other as Tessie collected them from the table. Petty, but Tessie probably expected Taylor to change her mind and invite her back. Unfortunately, Taylor got her stubbornness from her aunt.

Tessie had brought the set of figurines along on the trip from Maine, hoping to join Taylor and her friends playing the game. But if that’s what she wanted, she could have at least made an effort to learn how they played. Then again, for all that Annette had learned how Taylor liked to play the game, her own attempt to join in had not gone well. She’d thought ‘Alexandria’ was game-Taylor’s role model. Somehow, Annette’s game with Taylor had ended up with Alexandria dead.

“Still five hours ‘til midnight,” Zoe Hess called from her seat at the Barnes’s kitchen table.

“But we’ve been playing for _years,_ Aunt Zoe,” Taylor called back as Tessie made her way back into the kitchen. “Five hours isn’t enough.”

Zoe sighed in exasperation, and gave Tessie a shrug as if to say ‘well, I tried.’ Tessie, like the Zoes and Annette herself, had been consigned to the kitchen.

“You could join them,” said Tessie. “She brought back Alexandria.”

“She says it’s not really her,” said Annette, not sure how to feel about it. “Only a pretender.”

Again, Annette tried not to read too much into it. Taylor said she didn’t blame her for the move to Maine. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it was Annette who blamed herself. She didn’t know how to know.

“Seemed to have Alexandria’s powers,” muttered Tessie. “And she said _I_ was too much.”

“You alright, Anne?” asked Zoe Barnes.

Annette didn’t really move her head. Just looked up over her glasses at Zoe. She tried to shrug.

“Can’t say I blame Taylor,” said Zoe, electing not to inquire further as Tessie took a seat at the table. Zoe always knew when Annette wasn’t quite ready to talk about something. “They’re her friends.”

“There are people in Maine, too,” said Tessie.

“She doesn’t want friends in Maine, Tess,” said Annette. “She wants _her_ friends.”

“Especially Sophia, I think,” said Zoe Barnes, sharing a little grin with Zoe Hess. “It’s only been a few weeks, Anne. She’ll get there.”

“Maybe. I don’t know,” said Annette, but her words were drowned out by shouts from the other room. Sophia was playing a half-dozen characters again, acting out all the parts with aplomb, delighting in her new favorite: a hero named Chevalier.

None of the girls were playing as themselves anymore. Not even Taylor, really. Skitter had been someone else, as now was Weaver; someone through whom Taylor could act out her problems.

“Not the most mature, was I?” said Tessie. Annette snorted. Tessie had never been all that mature.

Tessie took off her fedora and sighed. It was one of her favorite articles of clothing, and she found any excuse to wear it. Perhaps Taylor would have appreciated the fedora a bit more had she still liked the noir movies, but her love for them had long since faded. Danny’s old recliner hadn’t made the move to Maine.

“Happy New Year’s, I guess,” said Tessie. She grabbed the bottle of champagne and refilled her glass, before downing it much more quickly than one ought to down champagne. Annette felt herself simultaneously smile and wince: gone were the days of noir and shared rituals. Of passwords and secret knocks. Of black eyed peas and hot cocoa. Now, even memories turned to memories.

They’d been inseparable once, Taylor and Annette. There had been a disconnect; some intangible change that she couldn’t quite describe but was nonetheless present. Annette wasn’t sure when it had begun; had it already been starting back when the girls had first come up with their game? When Taylor had decided that her new world would have her father alive in place of her mother?

Annette tried not to read too much into it.

* * *

Taylor hadn’t wanted to stop their session, but the clock was about to strike twelve.

“Come on,” said Annette, offering a mug of hot cocoa. “Like we used to. Just for a minute?”

The Barnes didn’t have a reclining chair, but they had a reclining couch. Annette patted the seat beside her. Taylor rolled her eyes. She didn’t understand that Annette was asking for herself, not for Taylor.

“Please?”

Taylor glanced at her friends, but they’d begun watching the television, with all its video celebrations around the world. Her eyes lingered on Sophia for a moment before she tore them away.

She didn’t reply. But she sat, taking the mug of hot cocoa and resting against her mother’s side.

Tomorrow, they’d be heading back up to Maine. But for now…

“Happy New Year’s, Taylor,” said Annette, her voice quiet, wiping her eyes upon her sleeve.

“Happy New Year’s, Mom.”


	3. 2014

The shouts from the Hess’s living room had died out an hour ago, replaced by solemn, hushed words spoken almost with a reverence—a reverence, Annette thought, less for the events comprising their game’s end, and more for the end itself, seven years after it had begun.

Taylor had called in her Aunt Tessie not long ago. A brief argument had broken out between them, as it always did, but by the sound of things Taylor had let things go.

Was it over? Had they finished? What would the girls do next? Taylor would be joining them at Northeastern in the fall; would they continue their game in some way? Or would they concoct a new one?

“Mom?” Taylor called. Annette pushed her chair back from the Hess’s dinner table, around which she and the Zoes had been sharing glasses of champagne and chatting. Before she could stand, Taylor entered the room.

“Would you like to play for a bit?” asked Taylor

“Really?” asked Annette. “That wasn’t in your plan, was it?”

“Aunt Tessie screwed everything up, again,” said Taylor, smiling ruefully. “I’m improvising. But I think it’ll be better this way.”

Better? She’d been planning the end for the past several months, playing off and on, sometimes bringing in new friends—they never seemed to get it, really, nor to get her—sometimes with her aunt, and on occasion pulling in Emma and Sophia over email or phone.

“Go on,” said Zoe Hess. “We’ll hold down the fort.”

She grabbed the bottle of champagne and poured the other Zoe a glass, before refilling her own.

“If you’re sure?” said Annette. Was she talking to the Zoes, or to Taylor? The Zoes didn’t answer, but Taylor smiled, bittersweet yet reassuring.

“Alexandria?” asked Annette.

“No,” said Taylor. “Someone better.”

* * *

“Aunt Tessie _did_ get better, though,” said Taylor, setting her notebook down upon the Hess’s glass coffee table. “And I kinda like how the ending changed.”

Annette let out a small laugh. Taylor had started playing as herself. But over time, she’d become Skitter, then Weaver, and finally Khepri. She hadn’t intended to become anything more. But where Tessie had been supposed to end it… well, any journey left you back where you started, in a way, and in the end, Taylor was once again Taylor. Not quite the same Taylor she’d been when she’d started, but Taylor, nonetheless.

And Annette… Just as she said, Taylor hadn’t brought her in as Alexandria. Instead, Annette had played Annette. Not quite herself, but still Annette. Someone better, indeed.

“I was _always_ great,” said Tessie, not bothering look up from the couch across which she was sprawled. “After all: I win.”

Taylor rolled her eyes and glanced at Emma and Sophia, who rather belatedly returned her glance. All three were seated on the floor, Taylor and Sophia on one side of the table, Emma on the other, papers and figurines littering the space between them.

“Still can’t believe you played without us,” groused Sophia.

“It ended up okay, though, right?” asked Taylor, searching for approval first from Emma, then from Sophia. “It wasn’t the same, you know. I missed you.”

She held her gaze on Sophia for a long moment before looking away. Emma smirked slightly and gave Annette a conspiratorial glance. It was too soon to know if there would actually be anything between the two. It’d take them time to reconnect. But maybe in the fall, when they all went to university together--

“Well,” said Emma, rolling a pair of dice in in hand. “We need a new game. We should do a western.”

“A space western,” said Sophia. “A space western period piece.”

They both looked to Taylor, who leaned back against the couch. She ducked her head aside as her aunt tried to play with her hair.

“I’m tired,” said Taylor, after a moment.

“Still ten ‘til midnight,” said Annette, although she knew that wasn’t the sort of tired her daughter had meant.

Taylor pulled herself to her feet and ambled over to the kitchen, pausing briefly to look at Annette. Annette thought about following her daughter, but the Hess’s reclining armchair was too comfortable.

“She’ll want to play again,” said Emma. “ _Especially_ with you, Sophia.”

Annette could hear the wicked grin upon Emma’s face. She didn’t need to see the embarrassment on Sophia’s.

“Maybe,” muttered Sophia. “Fall’s a long time from now, though.”

The sounds of the Zoes rummaging around in the kitchen almost roused Annette from the grip of her chair. She wasn’t being a very good guest: they were probably preparing desserts, and she really should help, but…

Almost midnight, now. Just another minute or two.

“Hey.”

Annette shook herself. She hadn’t been asleep, exactly, but neither had she really been awake. Blearily she made out her daughter placing a tray of steaming mugs onto the coffee table. The smell of hot cocoa filled the air.

Taylor grabbed two mugs and stood by Annette’s feet.

“Mind if I join?” she asked, almost timidly.

There wasn’t a lot of room on the recliner. But there was enough. Only…

“I’ve got a better idea,” said Annette. She could see a look of trepidation cross her daughter’s face. _Better?_ she could almost see her daughter wondering.

Annette mustered the strength to pull down the footrest and finally managed to stand. She shuffled over to the couch across which her sister was still sprawled.

“Move,” she said.

“Hm?” asked Tessie.

“Move, Tess,” said Annette, shoving her knee against her sister’s shoulder.

“Really? Wow. Okay, fine,” said Tessie, twisting and letting herself fall off the couch and down onto the floor. “Good enough?”

“It’ll do,” said Annette. She sat on the right end of the couch and patted the seat beside her for Taylor.

“Come on, Sophia,” said Annette. “Emma, you can squeeze in, too. Grab a cocoa. Tessie, Taylor got one for you, too— unless that’s seconds for her, you never can tell.”

Taylor rested her head against her mother’s shoulder, and Sophia rested her’s against Taylor’s. The Zoes came in and sat quietly by the hearth, not daring disturb the moment.

“Happy New Year’s,” whispered Taylor. Annette wrapped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders and pulled her close.

“Yeah,” said Annette. “It is.”


End file.
